Tuning into sensory signals breaks hidden behavioral patterns that can transform adult autism assessment through ADHD and autism unmasking —replacing self-judgment with curiosity and clarity.
Show Notes
Episode Details
Season: 1
Episode number: 4
Release date: 2026-05-07
Hosts:
Natasha Stavros, PhD — author of The Unmasking Diary and Burning Inside Out (coming to a bookstore near you in December 2026)
Sarah Liebman — licensed marriage and family therapist, ADHD-diagnosed, special interests all things neurodiverse
Audio Engineer and Composer: Noah Smith
Director: Linda Highfield
Duration: 00:31:11
Audience and tone: Educational, conversational, supportive; stigma-free exploration of neurodivergence, diagnosis, and self-understanding using personal experience as a case study
Summary: In this episode of Following the Threads, Natasha Stavros and therapist Sarah Liebman explore how “tuning in” to internal and external sensory signals is essential when preparing for an adult autism assessment. Natasha reflects on a moment of sudden overwhelm that revealed how she had spent years ignoring her body’s warning signs to fit social expectations.
The conversation expands beyond the five traditional senses to include interoception, proprioception, neuroception, and more—highlighting how neurodivergent individuals may experience these signals as heightened or muted. The hosts also introduce the concept of “attacks on linking,” where people disconnect patterns in their behavior to avoid shame or self-judgment.
A key theme is shifting from judgment to curiosity. By observing patterns without labeling them as “bad,” individuals can build self-compassion and better understand their experiences. This shift helps reveal long-standing behavioral and relational patterns that may have been compartmentalized.
Ultimately, the episode emphasizes that self-awareness—grounded in curiosity rather than shame—enables more accurate assessments, healthier boundaries, and a stronger sense of identity in the process of late diagnosis.
Key takeaways to prepare for a late diagnosis autism assessment
Tuning in to your senses is critical for accurate self-understanding. Preparing for an adult autism assessment requires noticing—not suppressing—your internal signals (e.g., overwhelm, discomfort, body cues). Many neurodivergent adults have learned to ignore these signals, which can obscure patterns needed for diagnosis.
Unrecognized patterns are often hidden by “attacks on linking”. People may unconsciously disconnect patterns in behavior (e.g., social challenges, sensory issues) to avoid shame. This prevents them from seeing meaningful connections that could explain their experiences and support diagnosis.
Curiosity, not judgment, enables self-compassion and clarity. Shifting from “what’s wrong with me?” to “what’s happening and why?” helps reduce shame, build self-compassion, and reveal consistent patterns. This mindset improves both the assessment process and long-term self-understanding
Resources and References
For more information on this topic, check out this fantastic article about the senses you can tune into: Your nervous system is not overreacting. It’s doing exactly what it was built to do.
Learn more about sensory processing disorder, a condition disproportionately affecting people with Autism and ADHD, and differences in children, teens, and adults.
The Unmasking Autism Diary: Memoir Expert on When You Tune In, Not Out (Part 3 of 3)
When I got the adult autism assessment it was because I couldn’t seem to hold down a job. I hadn’t really thought about how it could change relationships. While obvious in retrospect, I had somehow compartmentalized the problematic patterns of my life so that I couldn’t see them.
Sure, I had friendship break ups before. So many that it caused tension with my husband, Noah, when we first got married. He was afraid that one day, it would happen to us. I didn’t understand how my lack of ability to hold friendships had anything to do with him.
Now, I see it is all related. Every single relationship – my family, my friends, my lovers, my colleagues, my community…. the patterns of interaction hold. We get along until one day, we don’t. I cannot cope. I melt down and eventually shut down. I tune out and dissociate.
Over the years, I have wondered how I connect with such diverse people from all walks of life, and to be frank – why others struggle to do the same. From the abusive boyfriends to drug dealers, the unhoused, the trustfund kid, the famous people, the strangers from other countries and everything in between, the one thing that every single person I’ve ever connected with on a deeper level had in common, was a need for friendship.
Sometimes, that is literally the only thing we have in common, and I never questioned whether it was enough to warrant my trust, security, or acceptance. I would dive head first into a relationship.
On my 39th birthday, I had a lovely morning with two friends getting pedicures at an upscale spa, which I have never done before in my life. I’ve always viewed “upscale” as very little value added to the functional service for which I am paying.
After the pedicure, I was supposed to see a different friend for lunch. I hadn’t seen her in months and was excited to share about how much had changed. Within fifteen minutes, we arrived at the restaurant. I hadn’t even looked at the menu, and she began accusing me of having audacity and arrogance. My heart pounded. My chest tightened. I interrupted that that was not my reality, and then I stood and left. I walked in the slushy snow nearly a mile to meet up with a friend who could drive me home.
When Noah got home, we talked. That friend at the restaurant had called and texted him concerned about my erratic behavior. He read to me his response. What struck me was his observation that he knows this can happen, and that for the first time, we have the understanding that I am autistic. That I don’t see the “red flags” that others do, and that he has seen with this friend for quite some time. When I finally notice how unhealthy the relationships are, I get overwhelmed with a deep need to protect myself, and in that panic – I yell, I get big, I swear…. a lot; and then – I cut ties.
As I looked at him reading his text back to me, for the first time while being blamed as the cause of yet another fraught relationship, I felt seen, supported, and safe.
By centering my experience, the physiological response to fear – rooted in real traumas of all the times my inability to respond appropriately ended in catastrophic, life altering events – I was able to shift from shame and blame to… empathy.
My therapist asked me what results when that shift happens. I reflected this wasn’t too different from many of the other social conflicts I had experienced. I felt afraid that this person was feeding me an unbearable truth about me that was not my truth. So often I have felt misunderstood and absorbed others’ projected image of me as my own. By tuning in, acknowledging the autistic meltdown, I was able to remove myself from an unhealthy situation without judgement.
I felt empowered to protect my truth: I am not an arrogant, abrasive, malevolent, or audacious person. I am imperfectly human; I am direct; and I am autistic, which means that I do not understand social dynamics the way others do. I am also prone to autistic meltdowns that are exhausting, involuntary reactions with a temporary loss of behavioral control when exposed to sensory, emotional, or cognitive stress. I need friends who are willing to accept this about me, and to work with me as an ally, rather than perpetuate disdain and judgment.
AI-generated Show Transcript
Introduction
**Natasha Stavros (00:00:07):**
After the masquerade, masks come off. Using the Unmasking Diary to explore the everyday process of neurodivergent autistic unmasking, author Natasha Stavros, PhD, speaks with licensed marriage and family therapist Sarah Liebman, diagnosed ADHD with special interests in all things neurodiverse. Join us in this episode of Following the Threads as we explore social, psychological, and spiritual frameworks that empower resilience through change.
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Disclaimer
**Natasha Stavros (00:00:47):**
As a reminder, this podcast is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute counseling, psychotherapy, or mental health services. Listening to this podcast or communicating with the host and guests does not form a therapist-client relationship. The information here is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your own mental health professional with any questions you may have regarding a mental health condition.
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Tuning In: Why Your Senses Are the Key to Preparing for a Late Autism Diagnosis
**Natasha Stavros (00:01:25):**
Welcome to Following the Threads. I’m Natasha Stavros. And I’m Sarah Liebman. Today’s episode is about how to prepare for an assessment — part three of three — focusing on the importance of tuning in instead of tuning out.
In preparation for this topic, I want to share something that happened recently. I was out with someone and almost mid-sentence, my spidey senses went off like alarm bells. All I could do was excuse myself, stand up, and walk out. I walked in the snow in a panic — but also with a clarity that this was the most appropriate reaction to what was happening. I realized that my whole life I have learned to ignore my senses because, while overwhelming to me, others disregard or minimize them. When we talk about preparing for a late diagnosis of neurodivergence, ignoring these alarms perpetuates masking and makes it harder to get to the root of what’s really going on — that maybe your brain works differently, maybe you’re sensing things differently, maybe you have different sensory inputs than other people.
People often think about neurodiversity assessments and the sensory profile — but as Sarah has mentioned, that has gone in and out of diagnostic criteria. What I want to talk about today is tuning in not just to the five senses, but to all of your senses. Some of these are interoception, neuroception, proprioception, and chronoception — your awareness of time. All of these, in addition to the five we’re taught in school, are affected by neurodivergence. These senses can be heightened or underdeveloped, and many undiagnosed adults have learned to ignore them for self-preservation. But in preparing for an assessment — you kind of have to stop ignoring them.
**Sarah Liebman (00:03:57):**
You have to invite them.
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Understanding the Expanded Senses: Vestibular, Proprioceptive, and Interoceptive
**Sarah Liebman (00:04:00):**
The vestibular sense is important because it has a lot to do with your eyes and your body. What you just described — your body said, “This is a scary situation, I’m going to leave” — that was an integration of a bunch of different senses working together. It happened because you had been making this invitation to yourself: give me a signal when I’m in danger, when I’m tired, when there’s something I’m experiencing.
The vestibular system tends to live in our inner ear, but it’s also highly coordinated with the visual system. When we talk about clumsiness, one of the things going on is that the visual and vestibular systems may not be processing smoothly. You might have convergence insufficiency, or another condition where the eyes are misaligned — and people spend a lot of their life with their head tilted, until eventually the migraines and neck pain become too much. Clumsiness is often about proprioception — the proprioceptive receptors are in your joints and get information from your ligaments. If you have some type of hypermobility, your body is not going to get the same spatial information as someone else. That’s why I always had bruises — I’d run into chairs, get whacked by doors opening less wide than I expected. Why do I have all these bruises?
**Natasha Stavros (00:06:53):**
I was the “owie queen” growing up. Always had bruises, scrapes, cuts. That’s also always been my concern about CPR training — they say rush in and save someone bleeding out, and the neurodivergent part of me immediately spins out: but what if I have cuts on my hands? And then I can’t focus on the life-saving instruction.
**Sarah Liebman (00:07:29):**
Interoception is usually described as sensitivity — or lack of sensitivity — to internal body signals. One thing people often find out when they get a neurodivergence diagnosis is: oh, you mean when I’ve been sitting for three hours finishing a project and I suddenly realize I’ve had to pee for two hours, and the minute I stand up I think I’m going to pee myself — and also I haven’t had anything to drink all day? These messages come in, but they’re not strong enough to interrupt the hyperfocus. For me, the fear is that if I interrupt my hyperfocus, I’ll never get it back. But the gift of this is that we can often feel things inside our bodies that other people would just tune out. It can be a blessing and a curse.
**Natasha Stavros (00:09:34):**
The bladder thing is very much me. Growing up on road trips, I just never had to pee for 12 hours — I assumed I had a really big bladder. Then Sarah explained it’s actually related to hypermobility — the bladder keeps flexing because it’s all collagen. So it just stretches, I don’t notice for 12 hours, and then suddenly there’s a very real limit.
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Attacks on Linking: Why Neurodivergent Adults Disconnect Their Own Patterns
**Natasha Stavros (00:11:06):**
Through self-study from last episode, we can be truly introspective — neurodivergent people often are. But shifting the vantage point can be really helpful. What we talked about is how you may have these alarm bells going off in your body, or be hypersensitive to something, or completely focused — and how you can dissociate or compartmentalize it. You then have a hard time seeing the patterns. That’s how you get to a place of not being able to say — as I could genuinely say — I never once thought I was neurodivergent until six months ago. I never thought about it. And we had talked about attacks on linking. Do you want to explain that?
**Sarah Liebman (00:12:26):**
Attacks on linking is a neo-Kleinian psychoanalytic concept — essentially another way of describing defenses. When we’re talking about getting a neurodivergent assessment or living as a neurodivergent person, we are so good at seeing patterns — but because the vantage point is “there’s something wrong with me,” “I’m making school hard for those people,” “I can’t seem to balance a checkbook” — we don’t see those links as information pointing to a meaningful pattern. We attack those links. That’s the defense: “Well, that party was just not the right party — too many people, wrong food.” Then eventually, after getting an autism diagnosis, you realize: yeah, I just don’t like parties. *That* was what the information was saying all along. But when we have to defend ourselves against the terror of “there’s something profoundly wrong with me, and making these connections will make everything worse” — we attack them.
**Natasha Stavros (00:13:59):**
So when we’re in that defensive state, we see the world in very segmented ways — these segments need to not connect to each other because it would be unbearable or unfathomable. I imagine part of what made seeing myself as neurodivergent seem “not on the menu” for me was that I don’t actually struggle with executive function.
**Sarah Liebman (00:14:37):**
You have executive function superpower — twice-exceptional level. And so much of the cultural focus on neurodivergence is about deficits: not doing well in school, not this, not that. That left you with this huge other part of yourself that you could only get to through attacking yourself. The problem is all in here — or the problem is all out there. And yes, it creates black-and-white thinking, because there’s no answer that could possibly make sense. So it collapses into good or bad.
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Curiosity Over Judgment: The Shift That Changes Everything
**Natasha Stavros (00:15:29):**
So when you’re thinking about getting an evaluation, or even just contemplating self-diagnosis — recognize when you’re in that defensive state and shift your vantage point so you can see the links rather than attack them. One technique we talked about: leaning into curiosity. Tuning in to curiosity, tuning out judgment. That defensiveness is coming from self-preservation — from the harshness and weight of what judgment means for you.
**Sarah Liebman (00:16:14):**
And the self-preservation of how hard you’ve had to fight to survive. Not seeing that shaking your leg is stimming — and that actually, you’d do it all the time if it weren’t going to shake the table. Until you made that link after your diagnosis — “Oh, this is stimming, and it actually really helps me.” That leaning into curiosity even around small stories: I’m afraid of doing CPR. When I was getting married, my husband said wear something that covers your shins because you’re going to be really self-conscious about how bruised your legs are. People would ask me, “What’s wrong with you?” It was embarrassing. So if I’m curious about clumsiness instead of ashamed of it — if I’m curious about losing words, which I do a lot, instead of ashamed — curiosity leads to empathy, and empathy relieves the defense against shame.
**Natasha Stavros (00:17:51):**
And it’s having empathy with yourself.
**Sarah Liebman (00:17:54):**
Yes — self-compassion just shows up. You don’t even have to cultivate it. It gives me chills thinking about what it’s like to experience self-compassion for the first time: “This was the best I could do. It really was the best I could do.”
**Natasha Stavros (00:18:19):**
Though it is one of the hardest things to do — because there’s so much judgment out there. Little kids get trained into it immediately: “I’m stupid, I’m stupid, I’m stupid” because they can’t stop raising their hand or speaking out of turn. We’re very quick with judgment and shame. And the brainstem is slow to let go of a strategy that worked even just that one time.
**Sarah Liebman (00:18:59):**
Or didn’t even work that great — but your body ingrained it that one time, and from then on, whether or not it was successful, that’s the pattern your nervous system goes to. The human brain’s superpower is pattern recognition. Even if you don’t consciously recognize a pattern, your body is scanning signals and telling you: here’s what you’re supposed to do.
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Summary: Tuning In — Wrapping Up the Three-Part Preparation Series
**Natasha Stavros (00:20:21):**
To recap this entire three-part series on how to prepare for an assessment:
In the preparation process, it’s really important to shift your vantage point. One technique is curiosity. Another is to recognize judgment when it comes up — that can be hard. We talked about surrendering to what the truth might mean so that you can actually let go of judgment, because you can look at that truth and say: just because I say this doesn’t mean it leads to that. That connection may not be a sound one if you actually break it apart.
**Sarah Liebman (00:21:06):**
And that invitation — the story you started with today was that you had made the invitation to yourself to feel and interpret the signals. You didn’t have a tug of war with it anymore, because you had made the connection: when I feel this way, something bad is actually happening to me and I can leave. This huge invitation to your whole self, through surrendering to reality — it’s always been there. You’re not going to get diagnosed with autism or ADHD because it just happened. It’s always been there.
**Natasha Stavros (00:21:57):**
It’s always been there. And so it’s really about tuning in, not tuning out. Instead of saying “it’s overwhelming, I’ll just ignore it over there” — tuning in and being curious about it. Subscribe to the podcast to hear next week’s episode on how to actually get an assessment and what it’s like. Please like, share, or comment. We look forward to getting to know you.
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Credits
Thanks for joining us today on this episode of Following the Threads. I’m Natasha Stavros, co-host and executive producer, here with Sarah Liebman, co-host; Linda Highfield, director; and Noah Smith, audio engineer and composer.